The present application relates generally to social media and search engine trends being mapped with user data and, more particularly, to network-based systems and methods for mapping trends emerging on social platforms and search engines with data of interest to a merchant or a company to identify a correlation between the trend and the result of the trend on data of interest to the merchant or company.
When it comes to driving traffic to your website, there are a variety of ways to attract visitors. Two of the primary ways are through social media sites and search engines. Each has their own benefits and both allow users the freedom to choose products, people, places, and things to search and/or study.
Social media or social networks are computer-mediated tools that allow people to create, share, and exchange information such as ideas, comments, and pictures/videos in a virtual community. For example, social media may be defined as a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of the World Wide Web, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.
In some examples, social media depends on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities may share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content. As a result of social media, changes to communication between businesses, organizations, communities, and individuals have changed. Social media differs from traditional or industrial media in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy, permanence, and the like. Social media typically operates in a dialogic transmission system, (i.e., many sources to many receivers). This is in contrast to traditional media that operates under a monologic transmission model (i.e., one source to many receivers).
Social media has been broadly defined to refer to the many relatively inexpensive and widely accessible electronic tools that enable anyone to publish and access information, collaborate on a common effort, build relationships, and the like. Internet users continue to spend more time with social media sites than any other type of site.
For example, it is estimated that over 70% of online users (which amounts to over half of the adult population of the United States of America) use at least one social media website such as FACEBOOK®, LINKEDIN®, PINTEREST®, INSTAGRAM®, TWITTER®, and TUMBLR®, to name a few. Of those who use social media, it is estimated that 70% of FACEBOOK® users visit the site daily, 49% of INSTAGRAM® users visit the site daily, and 36% of TWITTER® users visit the site daily. With many of these users posting new content, sharing content, and/or commenting on or “liking” existing content, swaths of data are being continually generated. Content that is liked and content that is popular can become content that is trending.
In addition, users are entering queries into search engines (e.g., GOOGLE®, BING®, YAHOO®, and the like) about various topics of interest. Certain topics that are frequently mentioned and/or searched within a short period of time (e.g., posts on social media and/or searches via search engines by a great number of users within a few hours or a few days) are considered to be “trending topics” or “trends.” Trends may include, for example, current events of interest (e.g., sporting events, weather events, holidays), famous people (e.g., celebrities, athletes, politicians), products (e.g., a newly debuted computing device), brands, news, and the like.
Recently, there has been an increase in the use of social media monitoring tools that allow users (e.g., companies and industries) to search, track, and analyze conversations on the web about their brand, topics of interest, and the like. This information can be useful in the public relations management and campaign tracking, allowing the user to measure, for example, return on investment, competitor-auditing, and general public engagement. The monitoring tools range from free, basic applications to subscription-based, more in-depth tools. There are also monitoring tools for search engines which allow searches to be ranked based on the number of searches performed for a particular word or phrase. Here, words or phrases that are searched for quite frequently may also be determined as current trends.
However, there is nothing at present which is capable of matching current trends from social media and/or search engines with user data such as consumer spending data, consumer participation data, and the like. Therefore, there is a need in the art to have a system that facilitates the mapping and translation of real-time, real-world current trends to internal data that is of interest to users (e.g., payment processing companies; healthcare companies; political, social, educational, and/or cultural interests; law enforcement agencies; marketing agencies—which may be referred to collectively herein as “user”).